


The Luckiest

by harriet_vane



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 14:19:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9185456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harriet_vane/pseuds/harriet_vane
Summary: Prompted: "THE FICS OF MY HEART would be a Band of Brothers modern au. Nix and Winters don't know each other until one night, Nix gets drunk and breaks into Winters' back yard to pet Winters' dog. Winters, being a Good Person and also not being entirely sure what else to do, lets Nix sleep it off on his sofa. Nix... never really leaves after that."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [formerlydf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/formerlydf/gifts).



> Everyone should get to read the fic of her heart! Great thanks to [mistresscurvy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mistresscurvy/pseuds/mistresscurvy) and [oliviacirce](http://archiveofourown.org/users/oliviacirce/pseuds/oliviacirce) for reading this over and fixing it.
> 
> Title from the Ben Folds Five song The Luckiest, which popped into my head and stuck there while I was writing this. You should [give it a listen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9bRmuP-kQY).

The formal letter of divorce isn’t even a surprise, honestly. The surprise is --

“Son of a bitch!” Lew holds the letter up as if it’s going to change the words to see it more clearly with the light from a lamp shining through it. “That’s _my_ dog!”

He stares at it for a few minutes, but the words don’t change, so he puts it on the desk, in the middle of the pile of other papers he isn’t dealing with. And then he goes into the cupboard, which is basically empty, pulls out the bottle of whiskey, which is basically full, and decides he doesn’t need a mixer.

A couple of hours later the bottle is empty, the night outside is awfully dark, and Lew can hear a dog barking.

If he’s honest, the room is spinning, but in a comforting, familiar way. He’s been drinking a lot lately, whenever he feels lonely, which is starting to be almost every night in the king bed that Kathy’d picked out, in the bedroom she’d decorated. She should have kept the house, he thinks. She always liked it better than he did. He’s a farm guy in his heart, not a suburban guy. All these hedges and lawns and HOAs are bullshit. Lew can’t take care of a house this big on his own.

It’s also bullshit that that dog is still barking. Lew stands up to go to the window to look for the dog, or at least try and figure out where he is. Ought to be a criminal offense, letting your dog bark like that all night. Lew works for the government, he knows a lot about laws, and he can’t think of a “take care of your damn dog” statute. But there’s definitely one. Probably.

The room dips and weaves comfortably around him as he stands by the enormous bay windows, looking out over the darkened suburban street. The dog is barking sort of to the left, somewhere on the other side of the giant hedges he has not been taking care of at all. The tops and the other side of the hedges are always immaculate; whatever tight-ass lives next door has a perfect lawn and perfect hedges and keeps his sidewalk all swept clear of dead leaves. Lew only hates whoever-it-is because it makes the fact that Lew only mows once a month so obvious.

What good are they if they can’t take care of their dog, though? Lew loves dogs. Always has. He loves _his_ dog, damn it, and now Kathy’s keeping him, and she didn’t even ask. Lew wasn’t a great husband; sure, fine, but he never did anything to deserve this.

He doesn’t exactly remember deciding to go outside, and he’s surprised at how cold it is. Wait, it’s December, he realizes, which means she’s taken the dog and Christmas, God damn it. Lew’s in a t-shirt and a pair of jeans that look like what he used to sneeringly call “dad jeans.” The hair on his arms perks up at the chill, and he can see his breath in the dark, under the streetlamp.

The logical thing would be to walk down the sidewalk and knock on the neighbor’s door, ask him if he knows his dog sounds miserable and wants to come in for the night. Somehow Lew finds himself crashing through a hedge instead.

It tears up his arms a little bit, but he doesn’t really feel it, and anyway it was fast. He stumbles, almost drops to his knees on the asshole’s perfect lawn, staggers and catches himself. The yard is definitely spinning, and the moon overhead winks at him a couple of times. Wait, maybe that’s just Lew blinking.

Something cold and wet bumps his hand, and Lew looks down at a big, slobbery golden retriever-esque mutt who is trying to lick all the scrapes off his knuckles. “Hey there,” Lew says, dropping to his knees after all. “Who’s a good boy? Were you all alone out here? Were you lonely?”

The dog whines and tries to put his paws up on Lew’s shoulders, licking his face with an enthusiasm Lew’s ex never showed, honestly. Lew gives him a few scritches behind his ears.

A man should have a dog.

“Who owns you?” Lew asks the dog. “Some uptight asshole who doesn’t deserve you? You wanna come be my dog? I have an opening right now for a good boy. And you’re a good boy. I can tell.”

The dog barks once, but Lew rubs his ears until he stops. He likes stinky dog breath on his face, and muddy paws messing up his t-shirt. He misses his dog, and he’s just about decided to steal this one and take him home with him. It’s a foolproof plan. No one would ever think to look next door. Sometimes Lew has to track people down for work; he knows this kind of thing.

“Hi,” says a voice, just a little bit scratchy, sort of higher-pitched than you might think, but dryly amused at something. Lew glances over at a guy standing there in pressed khakis and a button-up shirt. It’s too dark to see much else about him, or else Lew is too drunk, but his skin is definitely glow-in-the-moonlight pale.

“You should take better care of your dog,” Lew says. “You’re lucky to have him, you know that?”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” says the dry voice. “You, uh, come through the hedge?”

Lew decides to ignore that question, since the answer is obvious. “A man should have a dog,” he says instead. The dog in question runs over to his owner and whines a couple of times, and Lew remembers just how cold it is outside. It didn’t feel that cold when he had a dog on top of him.

“No dog of your own?” asks the neighbor. He doesn’t sound angry. Lew’s not sure why. He’d be angry. The yard dips and spins around him again.

“I had a dog,” Lew says. “She took him. She _took_ my _dog_.”

“Well now, that’s a shame,” the neighbor says.

It occurs to Lew that the neighbor’s grass is probably really soft, because it’s so well kept. Maybe he’ll just lie down in the grass for a minute. It’s damp, but yeah, it’s pretty comfortable.

“Have you been drinking, by any chance?” the neighbor asks.

That’s another stupid question, so Lew doesn’t answer it. The dog runs back over and licks his face some more, slobbery and loving. He’s gonna miss his dog a lot more than her.

The neighbor asks him something else, but he sounds pretty far away, and Lew closed his eyes at some point. Can’t remember deciding on that. He feels a strong hand grabbing his hand, long fingers, cool skin, hauling him to his feet. Lew is minimally helpful with this process. He leans on a strong, sharp shoulder, feels a firm hand on his hip, manages a couple of stairs.

That’s wrong. His house doesn’t have stairs.

It doesn’t matter, though, because there’s a couch under his cheek -- it’s oddly less scratchy than he expected -- and a dog licking his hand where it dangles off the couch, and a quiet voice telling him to get some sleep, and then there isn’t anything for a while.

\---

Lewis Nixon has woken up in lots of strange beds. Even on a few strange couches. Before Kathy there were a few one-night stands with girls who thought his sarcasm was funnier than it deserved; then when things with Kathy started heading south there had been plenty of women who were willing to be bought a drink and let him have what was probably miserable sex with him. Usually he was drunk, and usually in the morning they were ready for him to leave, which he couldn’t blame them for.

This is a little different.

Bright sunlight streams through the window, hitting him right in the face. He glares at the windows for a minute until he realizes they aren’t his windows, and then pushes himself up on his elbows. Someone has a really comfy couch. They also have spotless windows, looking out over the same street where Lew lives, but not his view. A quick glance around reveals a nice living room, with a fireplace that’s kept up to code, plain shaker furniture, nice framed photos on the wall of landscapes and a few of crowds of children. There’s an area rug in the middle of the room, with no dust built up on it. There isn’t even dog fur lurking in the corners of the room, despite the big shaggy golden dog lying next to him, wagging its tail hopefully at Lew.

His head is pounding, but there’s a glass of water and a couple of aspirin on the table next to him. Which honestly begs the question, whose table _is_ it? Whose _dog_ is it?

Had Lew actually decided to steal that dog and said so out loud, or was that just one of those embarrassing morning-after memories his foggy brain was trying to convince him of?

He takes the aspirin, drinks the water, decides it would be rude to throw up in a stranger’s living room. The dog licks his hands hopefully. “I don’t know where your food is, buddy,” Lew tells him. “I’m not a hundred percent sure either of us belongs here.”

“Well, that’s my dog, if that’s what you mean.”

Tall, pale, and faintly amused; that must be the guy from last night who lurks in the back of Lew’s memories like a sarcastic ghost. “Uh,” Lew says, rubbing his hand over his unshaven chin. He knows he must look like a bum; he feels like a bum. His mouth tastes like hot garbage and he’s got grass in his hair. How did _that_ happen?

“I think you live next door,” says the guy who is not a ghost. The morning sun shines in his red hair, making it looked burnished; he has no stubble. His shirt is buttoned with all the buttons in the right spots; Christ, he’s wearing a _tie_. “Feeling better?”

“Better than what?” Lew croaks. He stands up, lets the room sway for a second, braces himself so he won’t topple over. Rude to throw up in someone else’s house, he reminds himself. “Jesus, I’m sorry about this. You didn’t have to -- You could have called the cops.”

“If you steal my dog, I just might,” says the neighbor, but with an unfathomable twinkle of good humor. “Richard Winters, call me Dick. Everyone does.” He holds out his hand.

Lew cannot understand what planet this man is from. “Lewis Nixon,” he says, giving his best I’m-a-decent-guy handshake. “Lew. Or Nix. Or, Hey You, Stop Stealing My Dog.” Dick laughs at that, which it doesn’t deserve. “Seriously, thanks. I can’t believe you didn’t just roll me back into my own yard and let me sleep outside. I deserved it.”

“You were having a bad night,” says Dick. “We’ve all had bad nights.”

Lew squints at him, and decides Dick Winters has never had a night so bad he got drunk in a neighbor’s yard. This guy probably doesn’t drink, certainly has never gotten divorced. He’s probably got a wife and two-point-five kids upstairs, waiting for him to send the crazy stranger away. “Yeah, well,” Lew says, not wanting to make excuses. Kathy’s right to leave. In the harsh light of morning, he thinks she’s probably right to take the dog, too.

“Your stomach up to eating something?” Dick asks. “I was just gonna make eggs. Maybe some hashbrowns.”

“If you feed me, who knows if I’ll ever leave,” Lew jokes.

Dick doesn’t quite laugh, but something happens around his mouth, a little twitch of a corner. “Yeah?” he says. “What a shame.”

\--

There is no wife or children lurking upstairs. The rest of Dick’s house is a perfect bachelor pad: nothing girly or frilly anywhere, no high-heeled shoes abandoned by the front door, no toys scattered across the living room. Just Dick and his dog -- named Bull, apparently, but half the time Dick just calls him “the dog” -- and a pin-neat house where everything is put away and gleamingly clean. “You ex-army by any chance?” Lew asks, sitting on a stool at the island by the stove.

“You can tell? I’ve been out for years now,” Dick says.

“I did five years,” Lew says. “None of it stuck, but I recognize a guy who cleans like the drill sergeant is about to come through for inspection.”

Dick chuckles. “I was like that before the army,” he says. “You made it through basic?”

“I can stay out of trouble for short periods of time, if I’m properly incentivized,” Lew says. It’s mostly true.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Dick asks.

He starts cooking, and Lew’s stomach decides to cooperate. The dog comes over and licks Lew’s hands some more. “How long have you had this guy?” Lew asks. This dog might be more of a mutt than Lew’s old dog. He stifles a sigh.

“Oh, I take in strays sometimes,” says Dick. “Saw him sitting by the side of the highway. I tried to figure out who he belonged to, but no one ever stepped forward. So we’ve been roommates for a couple of years now.”

This is a wise dog, Lew thinks. “You didn’t get all your do-gooding out of your system when you were in the army?”

“Nah,” says Dick easily. He chops up an onion and shreds a potato like he spent a long time on KP duty; Lew is pretty sure he didn’t. Dick hands him a cup of coffee, too.

“The service here is incredible,” Lew jokes.

Dick shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t have anyone to cook for,” he says. “They won’t let me work in the cafeteria.”

That throws Lew for a minute, but he works in intelligence. Even with his brain only at half-speed while the coffee and aspirin kick in, he can put together clues. The photographs of smiling groups of kids from earlier collide with a diploma on the wall over the dining room table smashes into a giant stack of papers that have been very neatly filed into color-coded folders on a desk by the fireplace. “Teacher?” Lew asks.

“Worse than that. I’m the principal,” says Dick, with a wry smile. “Teaching was better.” He gives Lew a plate of what might be the greatest food ever cooked on God’s green earth.

“I just met you, but you’d be wasted as a line cook,” Lew says. “Jesus. This is delicious. I can’t help but be a little suspicious. Is this poisoned? Are you going to chop my body up and keep it in the basement? Don’t get me wrong, it’s worth it. I’m not objecting. It’d probably be doing mankind a favor, I just want to know if I should enjoy this like a last meal.”

Dick chuckles at that, too. “Nope, no plans to dismember anyone today. On my busy Saturday I have a tree in the backyard I need to prune. Then I thought I might check the roof for leaks. Take the dog for a walk.”

“Rescue your neighbor from the gutter.” Lew shakes his head. “So you’re going for sainthood?”

Dick gives him that wry smile again. “Come on. You’d kick out a man who just got divorced and lost his dog? Compassion is a real thing.”

It’s not. Lew knows lots of people. They range from decent people to raging assholes; he’d put himself about halfway down that list. Richard Winters is making all of them look like monsters, and he doesn’t even seem bothered about it.

“Well, hell,” Lew says. “I owe you. Need help with that roof?” He’s not sure how you check a roof; a ladder must be involved? He’s not going to offer to climb up anywhere today, not feeling hungover and still half-wasted, but he could assist. Stand at the bottom and offer helpful advice like “Good job,” or “Yeah.”

“You should probably spend today sleeping it off,” Dick says. “Spend your weekend recuperating.”

“Lemme get you dinner, then,” Lew says, without really thinking it through. “Not tonight if you’re busy. Sometime. Not every day I meet a new neighbor.” Not ever. He’s lived in this neighborhood with Kathy for five years and he’ll be damned if he knows the name of anyone else on their block.

“Hmmm,” says Dick. “Little busy this weekend with some school budget stuff. Monday is the PTA. Does Tuesday sound okay?”

Since Lew has nothing planned in the foreseeable future besides drinking alone, Tuesday sounds great. He wonders for a second if he just made a date with his neighbor and then shrugs it off. Dick is too smart to want to go on a date with him. “I’ll try and stay out of your yard until then,” Lew promises, only half-joking.

“Hey, if you need somewhere to lie on the grass, mine is always available,” Dick says. “Just bring my dog back when you’re done.”

Lew’s grin is a little puzzled. This guy can’t be real. He’s a hangover hallucination or something. But Lew is going to try and figure him out.

\-- 

He sees Dick on his roof later, when Lew is out in the yard smoking what is definitely his very last cigarette ever. Dick waves, and Lew puts the cigarette out hastily, stomping on it, in case somehow Dick didn’t notice.

Lew hadn’t realized they were going to be on waving-cheerfully-to-each-other terms. He’s gonna have to stop being a scruffy drunk asshole, lying around the house in old underwear and throwing up in what’s left of Kathy’s plants. The hedges will stop Dick from seeing what he’s up to, but as Lew squints up at Dick, doing whatever a person does on the roof, he’s sure that Dick is the kind of guy who will pop by “just to say hi.”

Lew needs to pretend to be a human being, the kind who does more than go to work, come home and drink, and pass out in the tub sometimes. He waves back to Dick with one hand, feeling unaccountably a little embarrassed, and goes back inside to pretend like he’s going to clean his house up.

 Sunday, when Lew is feeling human again, he does all kinds of human things, like buy some groceries and shave. Dick doesn’t show up on his doorstep with a casserole or anything. Lew didn’t really think he would, but… Hey. Maybe. It would be just like him. Lew has a couple of beers by himself on the couch, watching football. He misses Kathy like the throb of a dislocated shoulder. Or maybe he just hates being in a big house all by himself. 

\--

Lew is good at his job. He takes it seriously, doesn’t show up drunk or too hungover, gets along well with the guys he works for. One of them elbows him a little, and says, “Good weekend?”

“Terrible,” Lew says, thinking about Kathy. Then he stops. “Well. Could have been worse, I guess.”

There’s kind of a crisis going on, sort of top secret, sort of incredibly boring; one of those things that’s going to be fine, unless it’s going to be the end of the world. Lew’s great at “hurry up and wait” since the army, so he does what he needs to do and then sits around at work until way past when he’d normally have gone home. When he gets the go-ahead to give up for the night it’s pitch black outside, and his car is one of the only ones on the road.

He follows another car out into the suburbs, and doesn’t realize they’re both heading to the same cul-de-sac until that car pulls into the driveway next to his. Lew laughs a little, and sticks his head out of the window as he pulls past Dick’s house. “Going my way?”

Dick climbs out of his car, strangely graceful, and laughs too. His breath is a white cloud in the cold air. “What are you doing, keeping the same hours as a principal? You must be nuts.”

Lew just shakes his head. He parks his car outside his house -- it’s dark. Just totally dark. He didn’t leave any lights on today, and it’s a wonder he hasn’t been robbed or something yet. Dick’s house, on the other hand, has one of those automatic lights over the garage, and lights in the front entrance. And his dog, of course, bounding out from the yard to bark hello.

“Stuck late at work,” Lew says. He was too lazy to grab his coat just to walk from the car to the house, but he feels the chill now, seeping into his bones. “You always work this late?”

“After a PTA meeting I do.” Dick has a jacket. He’s a little smarter than Lew is, maybe. “Actually yeah, most of the time. There’s always something else. A security meeting, an angry parent, a kid having a crisis.” Dick says this in a way that tells Lew he takes each of these things as seriously as Lew takes national security. Calm, cool, and collected, but personally involved in everything. “How about you?”

Lew shrugs. “There’s a thing at work,” he says, waving one hand around. _You know. A thing_.

Dick just nods. “Did you eat dinner?”

“Hey, I’m supposed to be treating you,” Lew says, but Dick quirks the corner of his mouth, and somehow Lew ends up walking past his own dark, shuttered house, and into Dick’s warm, bright one like he belongs there.

Dick cooks, and Lew putters around uselessly, petting the dog and generally making himself more at home than he probably should. He pokes through Dick’s books, noting approvingly that he has a ton of them and they all look well-read. “How’d you end up here?” Lew asks. He means in this neighborhood, and this house, and this job, and this life, just kind of generally.

Dick seems to understand. “Oh, I joined the army because it seemed like the right thing at the time. I liked it, but after a couple of tours I couldn’t stomach it anymore. Got as many of my men home in one piece as I could, and decided instead of shooting at kids I’d rather help them.”

“Just sort of a general do-gooder?” Lew asks.

Dick smiles like he’s going to laugh but doesn’t quite get there. “I guess. You?”

“Uh. Army to piss my dad off, and then I kind of fell into… government stuff.” Dick doesn’t ask him to explain, which is good because Lew isn’t even sure what his actual job is half the time. “Got married before I joined, which was probably a mistake. Nah, definitely a mistake. We haven’t been good in a long time.”

“That’s a big house, just for you,” Dick says, chopping an onion.

“Yeah,” Lew agrees. He wonders why Dick’s house doesn’t feel nearly as empty. Maybe because no one has moved out and taken half the stuff in the house with her. He turns away from the bookshelf and gives Dick a stern look. “You’re not a vegetarian, right?”

“No,” Dick says, shaking his head. “What makes you ask that?”

“Just a general… air…” Lew says, waving his hand around again. “Kind of a Quaker feel to you, like you’re kind to animals and kids and drunks.”

Dick’s mouth quirks up into a smile again. “I’m a sucker for a stray,” he says.

Lew should feel insulted. Or at least teased. Mostly he feels… understood.

\--

The next day Lew stands for half an hour in front of the mirror, trying to decide if you need to dress up to take your neighbor out to dinner or not. He puts on a suit jacket and then immediately takes it back off again. He tries a button-up shirt and a tie, but it makes him feel like an asshole, so he takes the tie off and undoes the top couple of buttons. Dick is gonna get an eyeful of his hairy chest. Oh, well.

He climbs into his car and honks a couple of times; by the time he’s driven in front of Dick’s house Dick is standing out on the sidewalk, smiling at him. “You could just cook, you know,” Dick says, climbing into the passenger side.

“I can’t cook,” Lew replies. “So now _you_ know.”

“What have you been eating since, uh, she left?” It takes Dick a minute to arrange himself in Lew’s shitty old car; he’s got legs all the way up to his shoulders. He’s handsome, and Lew wonders why he lives by himself.

“Oh, frozen dinners are better than MREs,” Lew says breezily. “And takeout is easy.”

“Expensive, though,” Dick says, like he’s worried about Lew’s finances.

Lew huffs out a noise that’s sort of a laugh, sort of a disbelieving _who are you_. “You cook every day?”

“It’s healthy,” says Dick primly. “You don’t seem to mind.”

“You’ll get tired of feeding me long before I get tired of mooching,” Lew predicts. “Steak okay?”

“Steak would be great,” Dick replies.

Lew knows a good place, and better than that, he knows a guy. He always gets the best table -- not hard on a Tuesday, but he wants Dick to feel appreciated -- and the best service, and they bring him a whiskey, neat, without him even asking.

“Just water,” Dick says, hanging his coat on the back of his chair. Lew raises both eyebrows, not judging, just... Startled. “Someone has to drive us home,” Dick says.

“I’m not gonna get trashed,” Lew grumbles.

Dick gives him a smile that soothes all his prickly edges. “One-third of the time I’ve known you, you’ve been trashed,” he points out.

“Fine,” Lew says, like that was a challenge, and downs his whiskey in one long gulp. He holds it up and the waiter appears like magic to whisk it away and bring him another one.

“Enjoy yourself,” Dick says agreeably.

Lew didn’t eat at work today; the alcohol hits his empty stomach with a comforting warm swirl. “You oughta find a nice woman to cook for. You want me to ask around at work? There’s lots of…” He trails off, trying to remember if he even works with any women. Or if he does, if any of them are single. How the hell would he know, honestly? He slept with one a couple of years ago, when things with Kathy were bad but not terrible, but she transferred to some other department.

“I’m doing okay,” Dick says. “How are _you_? You were pretty drunk when you told me about it, but it seems like you’re taking the divorce pretty hard.”

“Oh,” says Lew. He’s as embarrassed as he gets, which is not much. “Well, hell. How’s a man supposed to feel about being told what a terrible husband he was? She was right. I drink too much, I cheated on her, I wasn’t around enough.” He shrugs angrily. It’s on the tip of his tongue to tell Dick he’s better off without a new friend, but Dick doesn’t look disappointed so much as sympathetic.

“I don’t know,” Dick says thoughtfully, in that creaky voice of his. “I guess maybe if a man were feeling pretty crappy after all that, he might want to make a new friend.”

Dick isn’t kidding, or being sarcastic. And he’s not a space alien, for God’s sake, so what’s _wrong_ with him -- and how can Lew stop the world from ever disappointing him? It’s a big, horrible place, and if Dick hasn’t noticed by now, Lew will be damned if he’ll let anything get to him.

They order food, and chat a little. Dick had a rough day at school; he had to suspend a kid who started a fight in the bathroom. The way he talks about it, it’s clear it hurts him to punish kids, but he believes that rules are rules, and he has to do what’s best for everyone. It’s almost hypnotic, Lew thinks -- or maybe it’s the third whiskey he’s drinking -- but when Dick Winters tells you about his moral struggle to figure out the right thing to do, you believe he was up all night, tossing and turning over some dumb kid who’ll never appreciate it. And you listen.

Lew’s stories run more to embarrassing anecdotes about hilarious drunken mishaps, adventures with sexy women, and scrapes he’d gotten in and out of with varying degrees of success. He makes Dick smile twice, and laugh out loud once, and that makes Lew’s chest feel almost as warm inside as the whiskey he’s still drinking.

Dick reaches for the check, when it comes. “Hey,” Lew objects. “The point of this is for me to pay you back for not rolling my drunk ass into the street. Gimme that.”

“We can split it,” says Dick in a reasonable tone, which is infuriating because he’s being so unreasonable.

“For fuck’s sake.” Lew snatches the check out of Dick’s hands, which earns him an adorably tiny frown. Then he opens up the black envelope and the receipt inside says “PAID! THANK YOU, MR. WINTERS!” with a big smiley face. “What the hell,” Lew says, dropping it on the table.

Dick picks it up and frowns at it for a minute, a real frown, and then waves the waiter over. “Something’s wrong,” he says, in that super reasonable tone.

“Oh, no,” the waiter is adorable and embarrassed. He’s so young he makes Lew’s teeth hurt. He can serve whiskey, but can he drink it? “Our assistant manager, Mr. Compton, he says that you were his English teacher, and that he’s happy to get this for you.”

Lew stares, not at the waiter, but at Dick. Who _liked_ their English teacher enough to comp him a steak dinner? “You’re something else,” he says.

Dick looks a little embarrassed. “You tell Buck I said thank you, and I’m proud of him,” says Dick to the waiter. He says it so genuinely. Lew would like someone, sometime in his life, to be as proud of him as Dick is of his student becoming an assistant manager.

Jesus, maybe he _is_ drunk. “You’re driving home,” he says, tossing his keys to Dick, who catches them, one-handed, out of the air.

\--

It’s not a date, so Lew just _jokes_ about kissing Dick goodnight when he drops him off in front of his house.

Dick’s mouth quirks up, half a smile.

“Nah,” Lew says, strangely lighthearted. “Don’t worry, I know; you can do better.”

\--

On Friday, Lew finally decides to do laundry. His washing machine overflows and water spills all over the floor. Lew is decently handy, but he can’t find his tools anywhere. Kathy probably took them with her. He’s soaked from the knees down and the shoulders down, and it’s cold as hell outside when he jogs down the sidewalk to Dick’s house.

“You got a wrench?” Lew asks.

Dick is standing there, with a dishtowel in his hands and his shirt sleeves rolled up over his forearms, the light from his kitchen surrounding him like a halo. Lew’s heart bangs a couple of times in his chest. He shakes it off as a weird aberration from his ankles freezing to death.

“Sure,” says Dick. He doesn’t ask any questions. “Let me grab my toolbox.”

Lew stops the flooding, and his kitchen is only half covered in bubbles. Dick followed Lew back to his house, and he’s refrained from making too many faces about the state of the place, the empty bottles and half-empty bottles and stubbed out cigarettes and take out containers left everywhere.

“Crap,” Lew says. There’s a laundromat a few blocks over. He’ll lug his soaking wet clothes over there. Not tonight, of course. In a few days. When he gets around to it.

“Just bring your clothes over to my house,” Dick says easily. “I was making dinner anyway. Do you like gnocchi?”

Lew runs a hand through his hair where it’s getting a little bit shaggy, and scratches his scalp. “Yeah,” he says, kicking some bubbles out of his way. “Yeah, I do.”

\--

Lew’s eaten so much of Dick’s food by the next weekend that he’s starting to feel a little guilty. He goes grocery shopping and texts Dick to see what he needs -- he doesn’t text anyone, usually, he just uses his phone for maps when he’s driving, and work email, and sports scores. He doesn’t even remember what dumb joke he made to get Dick to give him his phone number.

Dick doesn’t text back right away, and Lew stares at his phone for a few minutes before he realizes people in the parking lot are looking at him. “If I were a teen, I’d be embarrassed,” Lew mutters to himself. His feet take him automatically to the frozen meals aisle, but that won’t work. Dick doesn’t eat frozen crap. He gets the fanciest twelve grain bread he can find, instead, and some vegetables he’s never even heard of, and whatever international sauces are on sale.

He shows up at Dick’s house with two full bags of groceries. Dick makes his I’m-not-laughing-at-you face and holds the door open for him.

“You really _don’t_ cook, huh?” Dick says, taking the groceries out and inspecting a jar of fancy mustard and then a bag of starfruit.

“I buy it, you cook it, I eat it, you clean up. It’s a great deal,” says Lew.

Dick shakes his head. His dog bounds over and whines at Lew until he scratches him behind his ears.

A tiny icicle of doubt creeps into Lew’s stomach. “Unless you’re tired of it.” It had taken Kathy at least a handful of years to get tired of him. He wouldn’t blame Dick if it had only taken him a couple of weeks.

“Actually, I was just thinking it was nice to have someone to cook for,” Dick says. Something melts in Lew’s spine, which he hadn’t even realized was stiff. “Do you know how to chop carrots?”

“I’ve never had any complaints,” says Lew.

“From the carrots, you mean?” Dick raises an eyebrow, and Lew laughs. “I think I can make something out of all of… this. Next time I’ll give you a shopping list.”

“Next time,” Lew agrees, bumping Dick with his shoulder in a companionable way.

\--

His laundry smells better when he washes it at Dick’s. It’s just a fact.

\--

Lew loses track of how many nights a week he’s over at Dick’s for dinner. Sometimes he calls and orders food for both of them, sometimes he helps Dick cook. Either way it’s a wonder that it takes as long as it does before Lew has a couple too many, ends up lying on Dick’s couch. He’s still got his shoes on, and he’s getting the cushions dirty. He tries to kick them off and it takes too many tries.

“Comfortable?” Dick asks.

“No,” Lew grumbles. “I told you, right? I told you about the dumb-ass decision with the drones?”

“You told me as much as you’re allowed to tell me,” Dick says.

“I told them it would blow up in their faces,” Lew says. “Nobody listens. I had good intel -- I knew it was going to go south.” He doesn’t tell Dick, because he’s not allowed to, that four good men are dead. Dick can probably guess, though. He doesn’t complain when Lew knocks back the rest of his whiskey, just raises an eyebrow. “You ever catch the kid setting fires in the girls’ bathroom?”

“Turned out she didn’t want to go to math class,” Dick says. “She thought a fire drill would be more fun. Because when she got outside she started a fight with another girl over a boy, and I had to break it up. Pretty good, huh?” He gestures to his face.

Lew had been wondering where Dick had gotten that bruise. “Teenage girls are vicious.”

“We had a long talk.” Dick sighs. He’s in the easy chair next to the couch. “I tried to explain that setting fires is an actual felony. Better to just pull the alarm. Actually, better to make better decisions.”

“You think you got through to her?”

“No.” Lew can tell it’s not for lack of trying. Dick will sit with that girl in his office all week, all month, until she shapes up. Dick sighs again, though, and kicks his feet up on the table. “You planning to sleep on my couch?”

 _What?_ Lew blinks, realizes his eyes had closed all on their own, and he’d nearly dropped the bottle. “Oh,” he says. “Well, hell. It’s just a few yards to stagger back to my place.”

“Nah,” says Dick. “If you fall asleep I’ll just throw a blanket over you again.”

“Neighborly,” Lew jokes.

Dick picks up a book, something about teaching by design, and flips through it. Lew lets his eyes sink shut. The room is spinning in a comforting way, nice and warm. He’s been leaving the heat down at his house lately, because he’s barely ever there, and when he is there it’s cold as hell.

Maybe he dozes off; he wakes up when Dick takes the bottle out of his hand. “You’re gonna spill this all over my rug,” Dick says.

“I’ll buy you another,” Lew offers, not opening his eyes. “We lost good men today. Damn it.”

“Sometimes there’s nothing we can do,” Dick says, but Lew doesn’t think he means it. There’s always something they could have done. There’d always be something else Dick would try.

“See you in the morning,” Dick says, flipping the lights off.

Thoughtful to a Goddamn fault. Lew will have to… something… eventually… in return.

\--

Lew gets home before Dick does about half the time. He’s got a key to Dick’s house, because Dick is like that, so he lets himself in, feeds the dog, sits on Dick’s couch and watches his cable. Dick has started keeping a couple of bottles of whiskey in his cupboard, for Lew to help himself to when he’s over. 

Lew sleeps on the couch again, a couple of times that week. It gives him a crick in his neck when he wakes up, but it’s nice having a dog lick his face in the morning. It’s nice having Dick hand him a cup of coffee and wait for him to wake up enough to chat, stupid stuff, morning stuff, “see you after work” stuff.

\--

Dick has a leaky roof, despite his best attempt to climb around on top and figure out what’s wrong. Lew doesn’t want him to break his neck, and he’s not about to offer to climb up there himself. Luckily, Lew knows a guy who knows a guy who comes over one day and fixes it while Dick is still at work. Dick rolls up when he’s finishing up, climbs out of his car, shades his eyes with one hand and shakes his head, looking at his new shingles.

“You arranged that?” Dick asks later, casually, over dinner. Lew ordered a pizza.

Lew shrugs. “Don’t give me too much credit, a guy owed me a favor.”

“Still,” says Dick.

“If your roof falls apart we’ll have to move this whole operation to my house, and no one wants that,” Lew jokes.

“Oh,” says Dick, with a funny tone to his voice. “I guess that’s a good point.”

\--

Christmas comes and Lew doesn’t have anywhere to go; Dick has family, but he says they’re far, he was just planning to put up a tree and call it a night. Lew helps him string up some lights, but Dick is a little bit fussy about getting the tree exactly how he wants it. Lew sits on his floor and drinks and makes suggestions. “You could put the lights up your ass.”

Dick gives him a look, fond exasperation. “You’re less helpful than the dog,” he says. 

“Put ‘em on the dog, too.”

It takes Dick all night to get the tree decorated to his satisfaction. Lew can’t help but be fascinated; it’s Christmas Eve already. The tree will be coming down in a week or two. What’s the point?

Dick sits down on the floor next to him, and they both look up at the Christmas tree. Dick did a damn fine job. Of course he did, Lew thinks, and wonders why he feels so warm.

“I didn’t get you anything,” Dick says eventually.

His dog is panting in Lew’s face. His whiskey is keeping Lew warm. “That’s okay,” Lew says. “I didn’t get you anything, either.”

Dick bumps Lew’s shoulder with his own, and they don’t say anything else.

\--

Dick doesn’t really swear, certainly doesn’t seem to drink, but he comes home a week into the new year and takes the bottle right out of Lew’s hand. He gulps whiskey down like it’s water and he’s been in the desert for a week, and puts it down without a wince.

“Whoa,” says Lew. “Everything okay?”

“No, damn it,” says Dick, in his bottled-up, uptight way. “It’s a CPS thing, and I can’t talk about it, and I can’t fix it."  


“Lemme see if we have that other bottle I hid in here,” Lew says.

He finds a bottle of wine, and Dick drinks pretty much the whole thing. Then he throws up, and Lew doesn’t mind sitting on the edge of the tub, rubbing Dick’s back, or helping Dick stagger over to the bed. Dick’s bedroom is pretty plain, not empty but not decorated, either.

“That bad?” is all Lew asks, and Dick nods tightly. “You want me to kill anyone, let me know,” Lew says, half-joking. Dick smiles more like a grimace. Then he closes his eyes, so Lew pulls the blanket over him and goes downstairs. He washes the dishes, feeds the dog, sets the thermostat for the night.

He’s sober enough; he could go home. But he doesn’t want Dick to wake up angry and alone, so he kicks off his boots and lies down on the couch instead.

He wakes up in the middle of the night, Dick standing over him like a ghost. “You didn’t have to stay,” Dick says.

“Where the hell else would I go?” Lew croaks. He rubs his eyes. “You kicking me out?”

“No,” says Dick. He sits down on the edge of the couch. He’s wearing his boxers and a pristine t-shirt, no stains on it, no tears. “Shove over.”

Lew shoves over, and after a minute Dick lies down next to him. Touching him where he can’t help it, skin like ice.

“Shit,” says Lew, and shifts so the blanket is over both of them. He throws an arm over Dick. “Better?”

“Yeah,” says Dick, quiet and breathy. Lew wants to stay awake, be comforting or something, but it’s warm as hell with two of them crammed on the couch, and dark, and Dick’s steady heartbeat pulls him right back down into sleep.

\--

Dick hands him a mug of coffee in the morning, the mug Lew has started thinking of as _his_ mug. It says _Teaching is a Work of Heart_. “Thanks,” says Dick.

Lew just shrugs, feeling a little embarrassed. He hadn’t done anything, not really.

“You’re a good man, Lewis Nixon,” says Dick.

That’s too much. “Come on,” Lew says, trying to laugh it off. “Listen, I’ll see you after work. Get your head on straight, okay?”

“Okay,” says Dick, but the expression on his face hasn’t changed, so Lew grabs the extra jacket he keeps at Dick’s house now and jogs out to his car, a little early. The cold air is like a slap in the face. January, frost on the lawn, frost on the roads.

His car skids going around a corner, fishtails across the lane, tires making a terrifying sliding noise. For a split second Lew wonders what would happen if -- Well, they’d call Kathy, is what. She’s still listed as his emergency contact on everything. And she wouldn’t think to call Dick, because she doesn’t know he exists. Lew just wouldn’t come home, and Dick would think he’d up and vanished. That would be that.

The car responds when he turns into the skid, pumping the brakes lightly. Lew takes a breath. He drives the rest of the way to work with his hands shaking.

He’s almost died a few times now, doesn’t take it too seriously. But he suspects Dick would.

“Can I,” Lew says uncomfortably to H.R., a couple of days later. “Uh, is there a form? For next of kin, or… emergency contact, or whatever?”

The woman behind the desk gives him a sympathetic look. “Oh no,” she says. “Because of the divorce?”

He’d forgotten that they knew about that. It’s all official now, the papers are signed. She still has the dog. Lew writes down Dick’s name and phone number and address. “Yeah,” he says, and gives the lady there a smile.

He doesn’t mention it to Dick. He thinks it would freak him out. In a good way or a bad way… Honestly, Lew’s not sure.

\--

It’s almost three months to the day after Lew got drunk in Dick’s yard, and he’s having what might be his fiftieth dinner at Dick’s table, drinking but not drunk, happy but not smiling like an idiot about it. Just content.

“It’s almost,” Lew says, “ridiculous to keep paying my mortgage.”

Dick’s eyes crinkle up in a smile. “Yeah?”

“I mean, I’m here more than I’m there,” Lew says. He’s joking, he’s using his broad hey-guys joke-telling voice.

Dick doesn’t laugh. He gives Lew a long, considering look. “I guess I wouldn’t mind,” he says finally.

Lew blinks. “Wouldn’t mind what?”

“If you stayed,” Dick says.

There’s this minute when the hiss of the heating system and the snuffles of the dog and the ticking analog clock Dick keeps on his wall all fade into the background. There’s Lew’s heart, thumping in his ears. There’s his hand around a bottle, cold, with little drops of condensation running down his fingers. There’s Dick, smiling at Lew like they’re both in on a joke.

“What the hell,” says Lew, not quite a question, not quite a curse. He licks his lips to say something else, to ask Dick what he’s _thinking_.

Dick picks up his own plate, and then Lew’s, like he's going to head into the kitchen and this is any other conversation at dinner. He’s smiling, eyes twinkling at Lew. Like he’s been waiting for Lew to catch up with him.

Lew’s heart lurches sideways, falls through the pit of his stomach, picks itself back up. Dick is wearing a tie, because he’s always wearing a tie, and Lew grabs it with one hand, tugs Dick down.

He waits for Dick to say something, to object. He doesn’t, so Lew kisses him. It’s an awkward angle. Dick’s hands are full. Lew wasn’t planning this, didn’t think about it beforehand, didn’t set out with any kind of strategy or goal.

Kissing Dick Winters is just about the easiest thing he’s ever done, for all that.

Dick kisses him back. He’s kind and patient and unruffled, except Lew can hear the little tremor that runs through the plates, silverware rattling around. It’s nice to know even Dick is a little in over his head here. 

Lew lets go of Dick’s tie; Dick straightens up. He’s flushed, pale skin all pink, eyes still bright, mouth looking a little more raw than a minute ago. Lew should probably shave if he’s planning to do that again.

“Yeah?” Lew asks. His voice sounds breathy, uncertain. Rusty. He’s out of practice at this, at all of this.

“Of course,” Dick says simply, and that’s that.


End file.
